Airline stories

I fly a lot more than the average person -- at least one trip per month. Today I've got stories of two airlines screwing up and how a quality airline fixed the problem while another airline just passed the buck and played the blame game.

Southwest Airlines -- These people know how to run a business.

Last week, our trip to New Hampshire began with me and the kids flying on Southwest from Denver to Manchester via Baltimore. Kelly had a work trip to Santa Fe and joined us later. Unfortunately, our flight out of Denver was delayed due to mechanical difficulties and that delay meant a missed connection. The agents in Denver, however, promised us that they had garaunteed us seats on the next available flight from Baltimore to Manchester. There were 14 other people on the plane in Denver that wanted to go to New Hampshire.

When we landed in Baltimore, however, we found out that our "garaunteed" seats were never reserved and that every flight between Baltimore and Manchester for the next two days had been "over-sold." That meant we had no way to get from Baltimore to Manchester on a direct flight.

The supervisor at the gate had an option for us. Take the next flight to Chicago. Then hop a flight from Chicago to Manchester.

I told her there was no way I was going to put my two-year-old and four-year-old through almost 8 hours and three flights to get from Denver to Manchester. There were, however, others in line behind me willing to go through that agony, including a mom traveling with a three-year-old and a seven-month-old. So I volunteered to go to the back of the line and wait while they got those willing to go to Chicago on their way.

At this point I figured we could either take Amtrack (not an appealing option because of the time involved) or hop a flight to Providence, spend a night in a hotel, rent a car and drive up the next morning -- the only problem with this option was that our luggage did manage to make it to Manchester so we would only have our carry on luggage.

An hour later when I got back to the front of the line, the SWA supervisor I had talked with earlier handed me a voucher that came close to paying for our trip to Kelly's parents at Thanksgiving, another voucher for $36 that we could use to buy supper in the Baltimore airport and then told me that three seats had just opened up on a later flight to Manchester and that I could have them if I wanted!

There is no doubt that Southwest Airlines really screwed up. But they immediately accepted blame, apologized for it and did their best to make things right. While I wish they had done their job right from the get-go I appreciate the actions they took to make things right. That's what good, well-run companies do. They do their best not to screw up but when they do they do their best to make things right.

Northwest Airlines is not a well run company.


Doug Grow is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Normally I can't stand his stuff -- even though I mostly agree with him. But today, Grow wrote an interesting column about Northwest Airlines.

Seems that Northwest is laying off a bunch of workers again. To make things better for the workers about to lose their jobs, Northwest passed out materials about how to best get through the layoff process.

Included in the materials was a suggestion that digging things out of the trash really isn't that bad of an idea when you don't have a job! Do you get this? Northwest just said to a bunch of employees, "you're fired!" But don't worry -- things won't be so bad -- you just need to start dumpster diving to help make ends meet.

Wonder if the CEO of Northwest has ever had to dumpster dive? Or collect unemployment? Or sit in the lines that you have to sit in to collect that unemployment? Or sit in the lines that you have to sit in to get publicly subsidized health care?

I can't, for the life of me, understand why Northwest can't find decent management. I also can't, for the life of me, understand why Northwest's board of directors puts up with the crappy job done by every management team they ever hire.

Northwest management, by the way, claims it wasn't their fault but instead passed the blame on to a vendor who produced the materials. That's typically what bad management does -- pass the buck.